Star Trek Finally Reveals Uhura Became Captain of Her Own Starship

[Bry_Sinclair]

I find it dubious that Starfleet would risk the lives of 400-500 crew on a mission to the SMC via a wormhole that didn't have a high probability of getting them back, if they couldn't why send the mission out in the first place, they wouldn't get that information back? If a ship was sent out and then stranded, assuming they'd then have excellent conditions to return back to UFP space with conventional warp it would be what 130-150 years, so it'd be around 2431-2451 that the ship would return, by which time a new propulsion system could've cut that travel down to months and led to the SMC becoming a region that is commonly travelled by Starfleet and already explored to a greater level of detail than the ship sent out the previous century, which then makes the entire mission and all the lives of the crew who would've passed away just a waste.

 

[valkyrie013]

A plaque for Voyager might read:
Hurried 70,000 light years to the far side of the Galaxy, taking 7 years to get home. Now a museum in San Fran.

No mention of the caretaker array or taking a transwarp conduit (or the other shortcuts) taken or used to get home. Deemed un important for the plaque.

Honestly, im with you, 150 years away if stranded, no gaurantees? No thanks. Just trying to noodle a reason or way for the plaque to happen convincingly.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Shhh, don't tell anybody, but Starfleet secretly kept some hidden copies of the 'Shroom Drive around for super-long distance missions and emergencies, but kept that fact classified, so those missions would have to say a cover story like they got transported there by a giant extragalactic planet destroyer shaped like a Bugle potato chip, and on the way back they hitched a ride attached to a giant Tootsie Roll-looking space whale probe.

Other edibles might have been involved as well.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Maybe a semi-stable wormhole was discovered in a region of the AQ leading all the way to the SMC, but given the inherent instability of wormholes Starfleet wasn't willing to commit a ship quite yet, so Captain Uhura's ship was sent out to the wormhole to send probes through and gather data for five years, after which point the wormhole destabilised and was lost. Uhura was credited with exploring the SMC and no one ever spoke about it or mentioned it ever again.

 

[Dukhat]

Or they simply observed the LMC from a very far away distance and the new civilizations they contacted were actually still in the Milky Way, but in unexplored space.

(If one has to rationalize that nonsensical plaque info.)

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

The means by which she did it need not be in person. As said above, via probes and ship scanners, or perhaps "it's a long story" (ergo, aid of some advanced species/accidentally via some other phenomenon, such as a non-wormhole portal, and either leaving the same way she came, or rescued by some feat of Kirk(as per his known adventures)-level ingenuity or deus ex machina, or some friendly intelligence.

Regarding promotions, not everything has to be obviously upward mobility (ensign to lieutenant to commander to captain to admiral). A more lateral move, such as going from one commander out of ten on a freight ship to one out of three on an ambassadorial/science ship, or from science officer of a small ship to science officer on a significantly positioned starbase, is another possibility.